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Level 1

60 points

Why is Apple TV 4 playback so choppy?

I Have 5 Apple TV's and have had no issues with any of them. 2 are gen 1 devices and 3 of them are the small black gen 3 units.

I just purchased a new gen 4 and plugged it in to replace one of the gen 3 units. Setup went great. Connected by ethernet cable to an Airport Time Capsule and 56mbps Internet. Sees the Internet and everything seems normal, but playing my iTunes content from my iMac is almost impossible. Stops constantly for long periods of time, never seeming to cache ahead enough to play smoothly. After trying several movies, all with the same issues I disconnected it and plugged the gen 3 back in. Everything streamed smoothly. Same Apple movie purchases. Same network. Same settings. What gives with that? Shouldn't the new Apple TV be faster rather than impossibly slow?

Any ideas how can I speed it up?

Posted on Jan 18, 2016 10:17 PM

48 replies

Apr 2, 2016 10:40 PM in response to Farlander

So, my hardware suspicion number 1 turned out to be correct: indeed, the Apple TV 4 does not correctly detect the Ethernet port speed.

I have disconnected the Ethernet and instead connected to the wifi: the issue seems to be gone now. Even my 4K videos encoded at 60 megabit now work on it! 🙂

Apr 2, 2016 11:26 PM in response to Farlander

Correct. After two ATV4 replacement it still occurs. I use WiFi AC on the ATV and the random stutter has minimized. It may happen occasional, even after the movie has fully loaded. IT fixes itself as it plays back. Just annoying as it happens randomly and not on any particular scene of a movie. The update has helped. I've seen less occurrences. Perhaps one to three times during a movie. Very visible on a 60" LED screen. Yes ATV 3 plays everything smoothly.

Apr 2, 2016 11:46 PM in response to SuperSizeIt

Keep in mind: if you have even a single wifi device that does not support 802.11ac connected to your wireless access point - it will slow down wifi for ALL 802.11ac devices connected to the same access point.

Why is Apple TV 4 playback so choppy?